Microsoft bought one of the world’s top makers of business-intelligence software Tuesday for its expanding stable of deluxe, high-end programs aimed at large corporations, agreeing to pay 6.6 billion Norwegian kroner for Fast Search & Transfer of Oslo.
The $1.2 billion purchase of Fast will give Microsoft its first search engine designed specifically for large companies, which are increasingly using so-called intelligence software to analyze their vast internal databases.
The purchase of Fast’s Enterprise Search Platform line of products, analysts said, will give Microsoft a professional-level search engine to complement search software like Web engine MSN Live Search or Microsoft Search Server and SharePoint Server for small businesses.
“What this purchase will do is allow Microsoft to go to the largest companies in the world and say, ‘We can handle every search need you ever dreamed of,'” said Whit Andrews, an analyst at the research firm Gartner in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. “I would not be surprised also if Microsoft did not incorporate Fast’s search technology into some of its broader consumer search programs.”
Microsoft’s offer for Fast, which was founded in 1997, represented a 42 percent premium to the company’s share price. The bid sent shares of Fast’s publicly traded competitors, like Autonomy, of Cambridge, England, soaring on speculation of possible bids for other search engine specialists.
Mike Davis, an analyst in London at the research firm Ovum, said Microsoft’s acquisition could herald a wave of future takeovers by large software integrators like International Business Machines, SAP, Oracle, Adobe and EMC.
Davis said Fast, Autonomy and Endeca, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is privately owned, dominate the burgeoning field of business-intelligence software, which help companies harvest digital text, audio and video archives to spot business trends and sales leads. Gartner estimates the global market for business-intelligence software will grow 12 percent this year from $815.5 million to $913…